Daniel Disney: The ABC of Social Selling

His speech to motivate the team to stop waiting around for sales and instead to focus on getting them the buy has helped plenty of sales professionals over the years. This was actually a very effective approach in the old age where selling required more push.

To be fair, closing sales is still a big part of sales success in 2018. Unless you close the sale there is no sale, everything else means nothing until the deal is done. However, the way we close and in fact the way we sell has changed over the years.

Part of that change includes the introduction of social media into the sales process.

Social Selling is quite simply the effective use of social media the sales process. Sales professionals can use social media to find, connect and communicate with prospects and customers in the same way they might use the phone, email or face to face.

With people now spending a lot of time on social media every day it has become a crucial platform to help salespeople reach more people and enhance the way they sell.

There are key fundamentals to achieving success with social selling, a lot of salespeople spend a lot of time on social without generating many, if any, results. It's the same as those sales professionals who don't know how to cold call effectively, making 100's of calls every day with no results at the end.

The key is to learn how to do it properly.

To help, here are the ABC's of Social Selling that focuses on those core fundamentals:

1) Always Be CONNECTING

The first ABC of Social Selling is to Always Be Connecting. Effective social selling comes from your ability to find and connect with potential prospects and customers. The more prospects and customers that you have in your network, the more opportunities you'll be able to generate in the short and long term.

My Top Tip: There are many great methods that you can search for prospects on LinkedIn, but when actually connecting with people it's often worth making the effort to your LinkedIn connection request. Nothing to sales rich, just a simple and light . To bring this tip to life set yourself a goal to connect with X amount of new people every single day. It could be 5, it could be 10, whichever number works for you.

2) Always Be CREATING CONTENT

The 2nd ABC is to Always Be Creating Content. Successful social sellers create engaging and great personal content to share with their network of prospects and customers. Their content helps showcase their expertise, build trust and start the all-important sales conversations.

My Top Tip: Your content shouldn't be about your product, but should be about YOU and your thoughts/knowledge/expertise. Create content such as posts, blogs, videos and images that offer value, insight, and knowledge which will then draw people to your profile and website where you can then leverage that to start conversations.

3) Always Be (starting) CONVERSATIONS

One of the most important fundamentals and ABC number 3 is Always Be (starting) Conversations. Social media is fun, likes and followers make us feel popular and important but they certainly don't equate to pipeline and revenue until you turn them into REAL conversations that become meetings, pitches, and presentations.

My Top Tip: When you share great content and you get likes and comments, use it to start a conversation via messenger. It might be a thank you or an opportunity to discuss the topic further. Those conversations can then potentially be worked into sales conversations if they are a qualified prospect.

4) Always Be CONSISTENT

The last ABC is to Always Be Consistent. Social Selling success comes from it on a daily basis. For example, if you only cold call someone once, and they don't answer, that's it. It's the same with if you do some social activity but then don't for a period of time , the results won't come. You need to build it into your sales process and it every day.

My Top Tip: Set time every single day to do social selling activities. It could be 15 - 30 minutes at the start of the day to connect with people, send messages and write a post. You may then touch base at lunchtime to do the same, and again at the end of the day. Set it your calendar to ensure that time is focused on social.

And there they are, my ABC's of Social Selling!

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